About the blogger

Tom Weber serves as co-host for MPR News’ The Daily Circuit. He joined MPR News in Jan. 2008 as a general assignment reporter, and soon moved to the K-12 education beat. In 2011, Weber was the lead reporter on MPR News’ investigation into Minnesota’s anti-bullying law, a ground-breaking report that has prompted new proposals and vigorous debate. Weber was a morning news anchor and reporter for KWMU St. Louis Public Radio for more than five years. He has won the regional Edward R. Murrow awards for writing and use of sound.

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With regard to your show about the voting of young people under thirty:

No one, including President Obama, is teaching people about the way Washington does work. Instead young people (and everyone else) are being told that the politicians will change the way the system works.

Instead, President Obama should be teaching the young people that they need to send him back to the White House, but that they also need to send him a House of Representatives and a Senate that have a majority of Democrats to support his issues. (If they do like President Obama’s policies.)

When I was growing up in the ’50’s and 60’s, this control of the entire process was known to us through our public school classes in government, civics, history, and the style of journalism we enjoyed (in which the way things worked was in each article further down in the article). We also heard it over and over again from our politicians. We definitely knew that if we wanted the policies of the Democrat(ic) Party, we needed to VOTE IN ALL ELECTIONS (including our precinct caucuses – remember the turning out of Hubert Humphrey in favor of Eugene McCarthy by us in the 1968 caucuses). (There were five people at my precinct caucus this year – all my age or older. We got to listen to all of the candidates who were running in local elections and to the people who wanted to run against our Republican Representative to Congress.) When I talk with young people, I find that this knowledge about how government works is missing for them.

And, it seems that the young people calling in (with the exception of one who tweeted) do not understand this very basic principle that we did understand and used to at least try to get an end to the Vietnam War.

Except for the one person who tweeted that she had gone to her precinct caucus, your show showcased what young voters are doing only about voting in the presidential election. I think you could have had a deeper show if you had asked to hear from those who voted in the 2010 elections and those who voted in their precinct caucuses.

Again, sometimes I think your show is just “High Brow” gossip and “touchy-feely stuff.” Please consider trying to find the real “nuts” of the problems you dance around. I would think you would want to do a better job for your legacy…

Julie

What is NPR doing to ensure that our public radio stations have the most current technology? We seem to have a lot of talent in the area of social media and other communications technology, but I’m not sure NPR’s technology itself is at a level to respond to the opportunity that talent provides.

John Richards

Would somebody ask the new CEO of NPR upon why the network has tilted in favor of the affluent elites when it comes to news coverage and talk radio programming on various public radio stations nationwide? Over the last few years, I’ve began noticing a trend of certain guests on different call-in programs, not just NPR itself, but on local statewide public radio networks, in which many have ignore the plight among the fleecing American blue collar workers and the struggling middle class during this economic downfall. It doesn’t seem fair to have a one sided discussion on the current affairs of this nation, especially coming from a small class of people who are affiliated with political think tanks out of Washington DC, and elitist newspapers like the New York Times or the Washington Post etc. I can tell you that the vast majority of people nationwide are still struggling in this so-called “recession,” while public radio continues to have “guests” coming on various shows speaking the most condescending way about what is going on with the economy. And I don’t think that is right for any news media outlet to withhold a fixed, political bias on current affairs against the will of the majority opinion.

Also, I would like to know whatever happened to real objective journalism and equal time on the U.S. airwaves regarding different perspectives on the news. It seems that NPR is no longer a viable radio network by the general public, but a public radio network brought out by special interests, courtesy of the wealthy that caused the destruction of the American economy and the shrinking middle class.

JBL

I’ve seen all the asks on Twitter for questions, and absolutely none come to me. I have all kinds of questions for people who work with individual shows, choose which shows a state buys, try to raise money, or the ombudsman, but not this guy. Maybe it’s because I don’t really know what the president of NPR actually does on a day to day basis. I suppose that’s my question, “What does a president of a national news organization do?”